Michael hoped it would be enough time if Murphy’s Law came back to bite them in the rear again.
Reassurances from Waters concerning their safety had done little to settle his nerves. He knew the area had already been scouted by air, he knew the Guardsmen were well trained and disciplined, and he also knew his people—the Winchester gang. They were as battle-weary and experienced as the soldiers, after months upon months of fighting and struggling. On one hand he knew he should feel relatively secure. On the other he knew something was wrong, as they hadn’t seen a single zombie since leaving the prison. Nothing about that was right.
At first he’d chalked it up to their route. He and Waters had both agreed to take the straightest logical route possible to the CC. It had kept them on old gravel and dirt roads and away from the small towns that dotted the area. Michael also knew the deadheads were on the move, however, migrating into areas they had no business being in. His gut said they should have run into some sort of trouble already, and they hadn’t. Two days on the road, and nothing.
“Hey, Mike.” John seemed to appear out of nowhere, effectively scaring Michael out of his skin and shaking him from his thoughts.
“Jesus, John. Don’t do that,” he said, one hand grabbing his chest. He looked around behind John before meeting the big man’s amused face.
John laughed and slapped his friend’s bicep. “Time for watch. Let’s go, pussy.”
“Yeah that’s real funny.
Ha ha.
”
Michael turned and followed John to relieve Jake, Mia, and Kasey. Mumbling to himself and glancing nervously around the thicket, he noticed Jonah up ahead, talking quite animatedly with one of the soldiers on watch. He was glad to see someone being friendly with Waters’ men. Someone other than himself and Todd, who was friendly with everyone, usually to the point of being a humongous pain in the ass. He was relieved that Todd was taking up watch on their front, with Waters and another soldier. Michael wouldn’t have to listen to any more bullshit for at least the next four hours.
* * *
“Where are we anyways?” Jake asked as we walked back to the campsite.
It was eleven at night and we’d just been relieved from watch duty. The most action we’d seen was Gus chasing a raccoon that had run down a tree and in the opposite direction. At first we’d thought that was a sign; if the wildlife was getting spooked, maybe something was coming. The beagle said no; he’d chased the coon around in circles a couple of times, then came trotting back happy. Regardless, we had listened intently for thirty full minutes, and all we’d heard was the gentle breeze blowing through the pines. Not even that faint aroma of dead flesh walking.
Nothing.
“Um, I believe we’re close to Pinkston. Why? Gotta date?” I replied. He elbowed me into the Humvee we were strolling by.
“Shh,” Mia hissed.
She and Gus were walking behind us but had stopped several feet back. I turned and almost asked ‘what’, but the look on her face and the stiffness of Gus’ body told me all I needed to know.
“Where?” I mouthed.
Jake already had his rifle up, barrel still down, and was scanning the immediate area. Mia waited a moment, head tilted as though she were listening, her eyes straying to the sky. Gus stood unmoving at her feet, his head raised, nose sniffing the air.
“Where?” I whispered, putting a little emphasis behind it. She shook her head and started walking toward us.
“I don’t know. For a second there I thought I heard running.”
The three of us waited for several minutes, eyes focused on the darkness beyond and our ears perked for the smallest noise. Whatever she had heard was gone. Gus was even beginning to settle down.
“Come on.” I snapped my fingers for the dog and we headed off to the small campfire burning a few feet from the lead Humvee.
“Anyone report anything?” I asked Jonese, the only soldier awake in camp. He was poking the embers with a stick, keeping the fire going low, while his two buddies were stretched out behind him in sleeping bags.
He looked up at our arrival. “Not a peep,” he said, then lowered his gaze and returned to the fire. Not much of a conversationalist, that one.
We picked out spots opposite the soldiers, propped our rifles against the grill of the Humvee, and sat down.
“You know what I was thinking about earlier?” I asked no one in particular.
Jake had already lain down on the cold ground, which I almost lectured him about, but decided to bite my tongue for the time being. He knew better than to rest on the ground, especially at this time of year. More than a few naïve campers had frozen to death that way, or at least woken up the next morning to find themselves stuck to the hard, cold ground. The damn sleeping bags were in the Humvee, lazy bastard. He grunted, and Mia asked what that was about. She was sitting on the other side of Jake, back straight and face tense, ever vigilant. She wasn’t letting down her guard; another reason I believed she had heard more than just the wind.
“Back when this shit started,” I said, scratching absentmindedly behind Gus’ ear, “I remember hearing something on the news. Didn’t mean crap to me then, but now I’m wondering. The news chick said the National Guard had a safe zone set up down in the southern part of the state. She said where, but I wasn’t paying attention.”
I turned my head to look at Mia. “I’m wondering if maybe that safe zone was the CC.”
Her facial expression indicated that she clearly had not thought of that. I glanced over to Jonese, who was doing a lousy job of pretending not to watch us.
“You know anything about that?”
He waited half a beat before answering. “You’ll have to talk to the Captain.” He held my stare for another beat before reluctantly turning his attention back to the campfire.
My eyebrows lowered as I studied him. For the first time I truly realized how much he and his fellow Guardsmen must have seen since the beginning of all this. Sure, me and mine had been through the ringer plenty. But the Guard? I couldn’t imagine being thrown to the frontlines of this thing, seeing the horrors he must have seen, doing the things he must have had to do. I wondered if I had been misinterpreting the soldiers’ cold detachment from the rest of us. The only one who had really been involved with us had been Waters. And I think that was even forced to a degree. I imagined all I had gone through, and tried multiplying that feeling by ten, though that was probably a conservative number. Now that I was paying attention, it was almost painfully clear that these men only wanted one thing: for all of this to just
stop
.
I wasn’t aware that Mia was staring at me, or that Jake had sat up. I was totally focused on the kid across from me. He
was
a kid, maybe 19 at the most.
“Hey, Jonese,” I said quietly. I waited until he reacted, which took longer than it should have, making it plain that he didn’t want to talk. He didn’t say anything, only sat there looking up at me expectantly.
“Why don’t you get some sleep? We can watch the fire.” I was surprised at the difference in my tone. Evidently, so was he.
He slowly shook his head. “No, ma’am, I can’t. Got my orders.” He poked the fire as he talked.
“To hell with your orders. Get some shut eye. Captain says anything, I’ll take care of it.” I jerked my chin toward his bedroll. “Go on. I’ll make sure you’re awake at the next shift change. Before he gets back.”
That must have convinced him, because I saw the faintest of smiles on his lips. He shoved the stick over to my side of the fire and slid down into his sleeping bag. I picked up where he left off and slowly poked at the coals. Mia and Jake were still staring a hole into the back of my head, which I ignored. No doubt they were trying to figure me out. Why the sudden change in attitude? I didn’t want to bother explaining to them that I had a brother around the same age as Jonese, and my heart couldn’t stand it if he’d had to endure what this soldier had. I was seeing these men now as more than merely soldiers; they had been fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, all following orders that had gotten people killed.
And they had to live with that.
* * *
“Get the lead out, people. Daylight’s burning,” Waters said during his last minute inspections around the camp while we loaded up.
The night had passed uneventfully, we had not been engulfed in deadheads by morning, I had not turned into a rampaging cannibal, and having a soldier watch your back while you pissed behind a tree wasn’t as bad as I’d thought it might be. Gus was making his rounds around the camp as well, diligently patrolling with his nose to the ground, raising it every so often to sniff at the air. He was on edge, had been since the night before when Mia heard that noise. So far Waters’ aerial support hadn’t reported any activity in the area. I assumed what had my dog’s nerves riled up was nothing more than the usual critters.
After the door slammed on the last Humvee, Waters took one more look around before climbing in and giving the order over the radio to head out. Inside Willis’ vehicle, Jake was singing “On the Road Again” in his best Willy Nelson voice. After a verse of that, Gus joined in. That brought the singing to a halt.
“We should make it to the halfway mark today,” I remarked.
A map was spread out over my legs. The paper shifted and wrinkled with each jar of the Humvee. My body felt like it was falling apart, riding over back roads for as long as we had. My joints hurt, my ass hurt, my freaking fillings hurt. I tried convincing myself it was better than the alternative, tried convincing myself the Humvee was causing my aches and pains and not a possible z-virus coursing through my veins. I’d read Abby’s notebook, her account of “the change.” I was presenting none of those symptoms, though I was now paranoid over every little hurt.
“So that means we’ll lose the helicopter,” Mia said.
“Yeah.”
I traced out the road we were on. We’d have to make a turn off before coming to the end, unless Waters had a change of heart and decided he wanted to take the blacktop for a while. I doubted it, so my finger shifted and traced along the next shitty road. Our route seemed to shadow the main highways. After the next turnoff, it looked like we would be passing through Cherokee Caverns, which left me with a sick feeling in my gut. The deadheads would be worse in town and on the paved roads, like those which led directly through the tourist spot. We would be skirting its edge, traveling up a mountain and down the other side. There would no doubt be service roads spidering across the mountain, so if we had to, we could escape using one of those; they would all lead back to the main road sooner or later.
“Hey, why don’t you put that away for now?” Mia said. I jerked my head up and saw she was watching me.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I’m fine, damnit.”
I folded the map up, making a hell of a mess of it, and stuffed it under my seat. She handed me a bottle of water and rubbed the top of Gus’ head. He was squeezed into the tiny space between the front seat and the middle of the back seat, staring out the windshield and panting. Jake glanced over his shoulder saying nothing. He had been distracted all morning after I’d caught him looking at pictures in the wallet he still carried. I didn’t have to ask who was in the pictures; he’d shown them to us shortly after Nancy died. It would have been easier to just carry the pictures in his pocket or backpack. It wasn’t like he’d ever need his driver’s license or debit card again. I think he was comforted by the old habit of waking up and feeling for the worn leather in his back pocket.
We were coming up on the turnoff when a voice came over the radio, informing us of an obstruction three miles ahead.
“Dead or natural?” Waters’ voice asked.
“Natural, sir. Looks like a fallen tree,” the helicopter voice said.
“Copy. The rest of you heard that?” Waters asked the convoy. Willis and the other driver gave their affirmative, and Waters began issuing a few orders.
“We’re kind of lucky. First tree down since we got started,” I said to Mia. She twitched her eyebrows in agreement.
The Humvees were winding their way toward the mountain road turnoff, though we’d been traveling on a gradual incline since leaving the pine thicket. The forest was getting thicker and the road was getting narrower. We had a steep drop off on our left side and densely covered banks on our right. The dirt road itself looked like it hadn’t been used in twenty years. It was enough to make me nervous, especially since I wasn’t the one in control of the vehicle.
“Where the hell’s the road?” Jake suddenly asked. Mia and I looked at each other before leaning up between the seats.
Brake lights lit up as the convoy came to a stop.
We could see nothing but more trees and out-of-control underbrush where the turnoff should have been. I yanked the map out from under my seat and tore it in my haste to open it up. Mia helped smooth it out as I cussed, and Willis talked back and forth with the others on the radio.
“It should be right
there.
” I jabbed my finger toward the spot Jake was staring at down the road.
“Is that the obstruction?” Mia asked.
“Can’t be,” Jake said. “They said there was a tree down. That’s not a fuckin’ tree down.”
“Quite, guys.” Willis leaned toward the radio. Once our attention was focused, we caught the tail end of Waters’ rant.